You guys have ran out of ideas where weapons and tactical skills are concerned where your making duplicate heroes… PLEASE WORK ON BUG FIXES AND STOP PUTTING OUT AN HERO WE GO PUT TO THE SIDE RIGHT AFTER BOUNTY FINISHES

@Muninn - Come on now This is such a disappointing question to ask. It reinforces the notion that the devs are either 1) incredibly out of touch with the game; or 2) simply don’t care and are giving canned questions veiled as being receptive to feedback.

80+% of heroes are completely unusable to be competitive. It’s been complained about since long before I started playing. The fact is that you guys are entirely ignoring the vast majority of the usable content of the game in favor of churning out new heroes. I understand that releasing new heroes is what pays the bills, but there’s just so much untapped potential in the huge amount of heroes that have fallen by the wayside. So many great concepts and interesting game mechanics simply collecting dust.

You guys claim to read every forum post, but if you were truly informed about what gets talked about here, the answer to this question should be blindingly obvious. The fact that it’s not is concerning, disappointing, and disheartening.

Although I agree that there are heroes that are very poor in PvP, over the past few updates there has been changes to a number of “less popular” heroes but no one seems to take the time to try and find a way to make them effective. Even going back to the Halo+Baron days when that was the best team to run, I saw teams for a good month after the fix came that still were using that team thinking it was the best to use.

I think its some accountability on the development side to change some heroes up in either a Nerf/buff to the way they play, especially heroes that haven’t had too many changes to them in a while (hideo, surge, cross, etc). BUT there is some creativity to come from the player base to to find different team comps. Mauler did not have any skill changes for him to become one of the better heroes in PvP. People found a way to use him effectively and saw how much of a good hero he could be. Heroes such as Ronin and Bolt have had some GREAT changes to them over the last few months but very few people have tried/taking advantage of how they work to find the effective team with them.

Basically I was trying to state 2 things. 1) being that there is always going to be a top tier hero for every role, just as there is always a bottom tier. and 2) that the combination between people sticking to the heroes they think are strong and not trying to find a way to use heroes that to get “buffed” are the main reason why we wont see a massive shift in the meta where the majority of the top tier heroes get replaced. As 1 hero gets stronger, 1 will fall. I just don’t see a scenario were the top heroes in pvp will suddenly be replaced.

Problem with trying out new teams is that you don’t have the chance to try them out. In normal PvP you have just three lives per hero. That is a pretty small sample size you can get with that. If you try them out in a duell you always have to have someone who is willing to do the testing with you.
I made a thread about duell against bots, but it got lost somewhere. I still think it would be good to have. You can try out new teams easier and therefore more different teams will be played.

Yea and that’s exactly why people tend to stick to heroes who they know are strong.

Something I was thinking about to kind of combat this was to change free play option of PvP to unlimited lives on heroes but very limited (Like only 20 pvp gems on a win, none for hero kills) to no rewards for playing. Then have a separate free play option that has a similar event structure to the draft brawls we had (So starting at a certain points number and then you gain or lose points depending on the outcome of the match) that would last the entire month with rewards paid out at the end depending on where you finish.

Obviously not a perfect idea and probably wouldn’t solve the “top tier” issue, but it would create two separate ways for people to play pvp. Either you can try to be the top for the month using the best team you can, or play around with the heroes you have and try to find some compositions you want to bring to events or the other mode.

@Muninn - You’re right and I shouldn’t have conflated my frustration with the parties responsible for balancing with your response; so I apologize for that and for airing my frustrations unfairly toward you. It can be easy as a player to fall into the trap of seeing all devs as a single entity representing the face of HHG rather than individuals with different and often mutually exclusive roles.

I do think that there is validity to my point though that devs reading the forums should be well aware by now of the unusability of the majority of heroes. However, that’s not necessarily productive within the scope of this discussion.

To more directly address your question though, there are dozens of heroes that see virtually no usage anywhere near the top level. (I’m trying to avoid giving my gut reaction, which would be “Seriously?? Just play the game!!!”). To name a bunch - in no particular order of uselessness:

The worst offenders: (again - no particular order)

Elite Rifleman

Oro

Galante

Halloway

Cross

Kunoichi

Fischer

Yanlong

Pris

Richter

Francoise

Slightly less worthless:

Castellan

Vanguard

Heckler

Fortress

Chesterfield

Surge

Beck

Phoenix

I’m sure people will argue with me on who I should/shouldn’t have included and that’s fine. I know there are people that have found niche uses for some of these and I don’t claim to be the be-all-end-all of hero knowledge. This is just a mile-high view of the huge amount of content that is essentially a waste a of space.

It would be amazing if HHG would shift some more resources away from the obvious money-makers and toward revitalizing the enormous amount of content where 95% of the work is already done. The concepts are finished, the assets are already there, the abilities and synergies are complete - all that’s needed is to tweak some numbers and this would be a whole new game for even long-time existing players.

@Muninn - Having worked in video game content balancing in the past; in this case, I just can’t accept that as a reasonable explanation.

In many many cases of anything involving design, especially programming, your answer is 100% true. However, this is not an issue of programming and I find it incredibly hard to believe that this is a case of something seemingly simple actually having a lot more going on under the surface.

There is nothing to change functionally nor is there anything new to program. This is an issue of resource allocation on behalf of HHG. There is simply not enough manpower currently spent on balance testing, analyzing results & feedback, and issuing decisions on steps to improve.

Edit to add:
From what I can see, it’s simply not a priority for the company. The unfortunate truth is that there is a higher quantitative ‘value added’ by pushing resources toward creating new content than there is modifying older content. I get that you specifically aren’t responsible for that resource allocation, but it’s frustrating to be dismissed under the pretense that something isn’t actually simple when it actually IS one of the things in game design that IS simple. It just takes prioritization and testing. A proper balance model is something this game sorely lacks. A process through which devs can make small changes, see data on how they affect things, and then make further changes, test those, ad infinitum. I know this is probably something that exists on some small scale, but that scale is not even close to adequate for a game with as much content as HH.

How about the idea that the introduction of new heroes makes others more viable? Prime example I can think of that sees a bunch of competitive play is Ifrit with Mauler. Its not an essential combo, but it is a newer hero that helps some of the older ones in a area they lacked before hand. Similar heroes that have direct effects are Cinder paired with Keel or Baron. Even newer is the introduction of Min’s silver that when you are able to get it off, allows for some pretty interesting combos with other heroes skills.

Also, going of information I’ve collected and any one can probably see, many players at all points in the game have heavily invested resources into some of the stronger heroes in the game. If 2 or 3 of those heroes get gutted in favor or 3 other ones this is a tremendous blow for any chance of players who havent invested in other heroes from doing well in competitive events for some time. This is more so for players just at the edge of “end game” content where they might only have 5 heroes at Platinum or higher.

Basically, I think the best approach is small “nerfs” to some of the stronger heroes and larger scale “buffs” for some of the less played ones. A lot of people that say the changes to the stronger heroes are not enough, and want the change to effect the exact reason why that hero is good in the first place. Some of the major changes to try and make heroes stronger in their role that have happened over the last 2-3 patches have been great and really improved the play of those heroes while others look good in theory but just don’t really fit anywhere.

I guess the biggest thing I cant shake is the fact that there will always be heroes at the the very top, the middle of the road, and the very bottom. Looking back to April of this year, there are a few heroes that are still just as popular now as back then but there are also ones that were frequently used that are now obsolete. You also have the reverse where some of the least popular heroes back then are now some of the most played. I’m repeating now, but we are never going to see a drastic change in the meta. While I do think there is a particular batch of heroes that have never been even close to escaping the bottom, there has been a fair share that have risen and falling from top teams.